" He Was 15 Years Old — Killed 29 Slave Catchers With A Slingshot — They Never Found Him (1851)....." A child's toy, a forked stick and a leather strip. but in the hands of someone with 5 years to practice. Someone with nothing left to lose. Someone who understood that a stone traveling at 200 ft per second can crack a human skull like an egg. That simple weapon became the most feared thing in the Georgia mountains. This is the story of Isaiah Rivers. Age 15 when his campaign began. aged 20 when it ended. 29 slave catchers dead. And he was never caught, never even identified.They called him the ghost, the phantom, the stone devil. But his real name was Isaiah. And this is how a boy with a slingshot brought terror to the men who terrorized his people. 29 men. That's how many slave catchers died in the North Georgia mountains between November 1851 and May 1856. 29 men who made their living hunting human beings. 29 men who owned blood hounds and rifles and whips and chains. 29 men who rode through forests looking for runaways. who collected bounties measured in dollars per pound of human flesh returned. 29 men killed by stones. Smooth riverstones the size of a child's fist launched from a slingshot made of hickory wood and deer leather traveling so fast the human eye couldn't track them. hitting skulls, temples, throats, eyes with such precision that doctors examining the bodies couldn't understand how someone could achieve such accuracy. 29 men who went into the Georgia mountains hunting escaped slaves and never came back. And the person who killed them was a boy 15 years old when he started. self-taught, patient, invisible, waiting in trees and behind rocks and under bridges, waiting for hours, sometimes days, for the perfect shot. One stone, one kill, then disappearing into the forest like smoke. For 5 years, slave catchers in North Georgia lived in fear. They traveled in larger groups. They wore extra clothing for padding. Some wore crude metal helmets. It didn't matter. The stones found them anyway. Through fog, through darkness, through rain, the ghost never missed. And he was never seen until now. Until we tell you who he really was and how he learned to kill with such terrible perfection. Isaiah Rivers was born enslaved in 1836 on a tobacco plantation in Cherokee County, North Georgia. His mother, Miriam, died giving birth to him. His father, Jacob, raised him alone while working as a fieldand on the Morrison plantation, 500 acres of red clay hills and tobacco fields owned by a man named William Morrison, who believed that enslaved people were livestock that could talk. Isaiah grew up thin and small for his age. At 8 years old, he looked six. At 12, he looked nine. Master Morrison called him the runt and said he'd never be worth much for field work. So Isaiah was assigned to lighter tasks, carrying water to field hands, collecting firewood, helping the plantation carpenter, running errands between the big house and the quarters.It was during these childhood years of wandering the plantation that Isaiah discovered his gift. He could see details that others missed. A bird hidden in leaves 200 feet away, a snake coiled in grass, the exact moment a squirrel would move from one branch to another. His father, Jacob, noticed this and taught him to make a slingshot, not the crude forked stick that children played with, but a real hunting weapon.Jacob had learned the craft from his own father, who had learned it in Africa before the Middle Passage. The weapon was simple. A Y-shaped piece of hickory wood hardened in fire. Two leather strips attached to the forks. A small leather pouch to hold the stone. The power came from the rubber-like elasticity of rawhide properly cured and the leverage of the wooden frame. A stone launched from a well-made slingshot could travel over 200 ft per second. Fast enough to kill a rabbit at 50 paces. Fast enough to crack bone. Isaiah was 9 years old when his father first taught him to shoot. They would practice in secret in the forest on Sundays. The one day enslaved people had a few hours to themselves. Jacob would set up targets, tree stumps, pieces of bark. Later, smaller targets, acorns on branches, knot holes in trees at increasing distances. Isaiah practiced for hours, thousands of shots over 3 years. By age 12 in 1848, Isaiah could hit a playing card at 50 ft. By 13, he could hit a coin at that distance.